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BlackRock predicts another historic year for crypto

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Maturity or insecurity? Spot Bitcoin ETFs head into year 2

Bitcoin should rip higher under President-elect Donald Trump, according to BlackRock’s ETF chief.

Samara Cohen, the firm’s ETF and index instruments chief investment officer, thinks cryptocurrency deregulation will “absolutely” propel bitcoin to another historic year.

“There will be progress made on… FIT21 [“Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act.] There will be progress made on stable coins. There will be progress made just on definitions in taxonomy,” she told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week.

Cohen is behind the firm’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) – which is up 114% since its January 2024 debut and up almost 8% year to date. It comes as bitcoin briefly traded above $100,000 this week.

Despite the strong performance, she suggests cryptocurrency investors need an iron stomach.

“Bitcoin is a risky asset. So, 15% in the context of Bitcoin is not an enormous move. Investors should expect volatility,” said Cohen. “But in the long term, the price of bitcoin is really going to be determined by the level and pace of adoption.”

On Monday, BlackRock announced the official launch of its iShares Bitcoin ETF on CBOE Canada.

And, it’s not the only firm making an early year push deeper into cryptocurrency. Calamos Investments plans to launch its Bitcoin Structured Alt Protection ETF next Wednesday – two days after Trump’s inauguration. According to the press release, it’s the “world’s first 100% downside protected bitcoin ETF.”

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Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: JBHT, QRVO, FAST

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Capital One acknowledges ‘outage’ as users report issues accessing deposits

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Capital One said an unspecified technical issue was hampering customer account access Thursday, as some users reported issues with direct deposits.

In response to complaints on social media platform X, a Capital One representative said the bank was experiencing a “tech outage” that was affecting “a variety of functions,” with no timetable for a restoration of services.

Just before noon Thursday, the company released an official statement about the problem.

“We are experiencing a technical issue with a third-party vendor that is temporarily impacting some account services, deposits, and payment processing for portions of our consumer, small business, and commercial bank,” it said.

Late Thursday, the vendor, Fidelity Information Services (FIS) released a statement saying it was working to restore applications affected by a local area power outage at one of its data centers. An FIS spokesperson did not respond to multiple follow-up questions.

According to Downdetector.com, which tracks reports of user complaints about digital services, the issues began around 6 a.m. ET, with some 2,000 reports observed.

The site indicated the frequency of reports had started leveling off around 9 a.m. ET, but by 4 p.m., there had still not been a significant reduction in complaints registered.

The issues at Capital One come a day after Citibank acknowledged a problem affecting customers’ ability to access their accounts from mobile devices, as well as an apparent issue related to fraud alerts. While the mobile access issue appeared to have been resolved, a Citi rep said on X on Thursday it was still working to fix the fraud-alert item.

Earlier this month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Capital One, alleging it misled customers about its savings-account offerings. Capital One has denied the allegations.

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Wall Street banks see deal activity picking up, even after record results

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Jonathan Gray, president and chief operating officer of Blackstone Inc., from left, Ron O’Hanley, chief executive officer of State Street Corp., Ted Pick, chief executive officer of Morgan Stanley, Marc Rowan, chief executive officer of Apollo Global Management LLC, and David Solomon, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., during the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in Hong Kong, China, on Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024.

Paul Yeung | Bloomberg | Getty Images

American investment banks just disclosed a record-smashing quarter, helped by surging trading activity around the U.S. election and a pickup in investment banking deal flow.

Traders at JPMorgan Chase, for instance, have never had a better fourth quarter after seeing revenue surge 21% to $7 billion, while Goldman Sachs’ equities business generated $13.4 billion for the full year — also a record.

For Wall Street, it was a welcome return to the type of environment craved by traders and bankers after a muted period when the Federal Reserve was raising rates as it grappled with inflation. Boosted by a Fed in easing mode and the election of Donald Trump in November, banks including JPMorgan, Goldman and Morgan Stanley easily topped expectations for the quarter.

But the grand machinery keeping Wall Street moving is just picking up steam. That’s because, deterred by regulatory uncertainty and higher borrowing costs, U.S. corporations have mostly sat on the sidelines in recent years when it came to buying competitors or selling themselves.

That’s about to change, according to Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick. Buoyed by confidence in the business environment, including hopes for lower corporate taxes and smoother approvals on mergers, banks are seeing growing backlogs of merger deals, according to Pick and Goldman CEO David Solomon.

Morgan Stanley’s deal pipeline is “the strongest it’s been in 5 to 10 years, maybe even longer,” Pick said Thursday.

Capital markets activity including debt and equity issuance had already began recovering last year, rising 25% from the depressed levels of 2023, per Dealogic figures. But without normal levels of merger activity, the entire Wall Street ecosystem has been missing a key driver of activity.

Multibillion dollar acquisitions sit at “the top of the waterfall” for investment banks like Morgan Stanley, Pick explained, because they are high-margin transactions that “have a multiplier effect through the whole organization.”

That’s because they create the need for other types of transactions, like massive loans, credit facilities or stock issuance, while generating millions of dollars in wealth for executives that needs to be managed professionally.

“The last piece is what we’ve been waiting for, which are M&A tickets,” Pick said, referring to the contracts governing merger deals. “We are excited about pushing that through to the rest of the investment bank.”

Another engine of value creation for Wall Street that has been slow in recent years is the IPO market — which is also set to pick up, Solomon told an audience of tech investors and employees Wednesday.

“There has been a meaningful shift in CEO confidence,” Solomon said earlier that day. “There is a significant backlog from sponsors and an overall increased appetite for deal-making supported by an improving regulatory backdrop.”

After a lean few years, it should make for a profitable time for Wall Street’s dealmakers and traders.

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